Assessing Jamaica At The End Of 2018/ A Look At The Avoidable Failures:

June 2013, in a stunning and incomprehensible decision the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 ideological decision struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby vs Holder. Holder being, Eric Holder the then sitting Attorney General of the United States.The Ruling freed up nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval. “Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions..”In layman’s language, [the law worked too well so it’s time for us to roll it back]. Never mind that there is an incessant assault against the voting rights of racial minorities today in different forms in different states.

December 2018 the People’s National Party announced it no longer supports the states of emergency in the Parish of Saint James because whatever the police are doing now they can proceed along the same path without the emergency powers which gives them the authority to lock up violent criminals for extended periods of time without charge.Now here is the sobering reality. The state of emergency was declared in St James as a direct result of a violence level which was unprecedented.The extent of the killings was such that it scared the rich hoteliers who were skittish about their bottom line.Now, as I have said in a previous article there are only two or three reasons why violent crime would take a precipitous 72% drop in the parish of St James and those reasons are (a) the violence producers have taken flight (b) they are locked up by the police or (c) a combination of both (a&b).

We can have a debate about the constitutionality of locking up killers we have no evidence to charge criminally and I am prepared to debate the legitimacy of doing so.Desperate time calls for desperate measures. If a state is to survive by taking drastic measures what better time to do so than send a message through how it treats its most violent criminals?We may talk until we are blue in the face as the Nation’s Opposition party has done about not breaking the law to enforce the law. We may even pull out graphs and diagrams using graphs to make our point as to why we believe there is no need for a continuance of the measures.Or we can talk to the people who are on the ground, the people who live in the communities and are terrified that if the powers are removed which gives the security forces the authority to hold violent criminals, their communities will in short order be awash in their blood and that of their loved ones.

What I find disgusting and indeed mind-numbingly ignorant is the argument being used by the PNP, that a drop in homicide in 2018 ought not be celebrated because on the Government’s watch last year 1616 homicides were reported to the police.The contention being, since the JLP presided over the 1616 number in 2017, it should receive no credit for the fact that hundreds fewer have been murdered this year.So if there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about the political nature of the PNP’s decision to pull its support, the latter contention ought to put those doubts to rest.

In the final analysis, the reduction in murders this year whatever the final count turns out to be should give no one comfort that the state had to flood the streets with the bodies of security personnel to realize fewer homicide numbers in specific geographical areas.The takeaway from this is that sure, the criminals are running away from the security forces when they flood the streets in force, but as soon as they determine the movements of the security personnel they are right back at work killing and doing whatever else they do.

So clearly the solution is not in flooding the streets with bodies, even though that has an effect tantamount to that of cotton candy.The problem is that a nation cannot survive on cotton candy but the country’s leaders are too heavily invested in the idea of fillers and fast food stopgap methods to take the time to prepare the right kind of diet which will give the nation sustenance for generations to come.The problem here is that the nations uneducated are crying out for leadership and the educated which are supposed to give that leadership are self-centered moronic idiots who have their heads too far up their own asses to do anything about crime.It behooves them to take a listen to Damion Crawford, but the self-important bourgeoisie are reluctant to pull their heads from their asses and listen to anyone but the sound of their own voices.And so we get an echo chamber of nonsense from the very same dogs chasing their silly tails.